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The Sony Walkman and virtual reality headsets aren’t the only popular examples of personal technology. In the hands of Paul Rocket, they are vehicles for learning more about Japanese, American, global technology trends – and about ourselves.
Roquet is an associate professor in the MIT program in comparative media studies / writing, and his forte is in analyzing how new consumer technologies change people’s interaction with the environment. The focus of this effort was Japan, an early adopter of many post-war trends in personal technology.
For example, Rocket In his 2016 book Ambient Media: Japanese Atmospheres of Self (University of Minnesota Press), he examined how music, film, and other media are used in Japan to create a soothing and relaxing atmosphere for people. That gives people a sense of control, even if their feelings are mediated by the products they’re currently using.
In the year In his 2022 book “The Immersive Enclosure: Virtual Reality in Japan” (Columbia University Press), Rocket examines the impact of VR technologies on users and understands these devices as tools to shut out the outside world and communicate with others in networked settings. In the US, Rocket has outlined VR-traditional directions that have come out of military and aviation applications, but in Japan it is focused on forms of escapist entertainment.
As Rockett puts it, his work focuses on “the relationship between media technologies and environmental awareness and how this relationship plays out differently in different cultural contexts.”
“Trying to think of similar questions in different parts of the world can be very useful,” he adds.
Those different cultures are intertwined, certainly, in Japan, for example, British musician Brian Eno has had a huge impact on local media perception. The translation of VR technologies from the US to Japan was accomplished in part through technologists and inventors at MIT. Meanwhile, Japan gave the world its very own sonic enclosure, the Sony Walkman.
As such, Rocket’s work is creative in bringing together cultural trends across different media and tracing them across the globe in the course of history, present and future technology. For research and teaching, Rockett was granted a residency at MIT earlier this year.
The exchange program pays
Rocket grew up in California and his family moved to different cities during his childhood. While studying Japanese as a sophomore at Davis, he enrolled in an exchange program with Japan, the California-Japan Scholars Program, which allowed him to see the country up close. It was Rocket’s first time outside the United States, and the trip had a lasting impact.
As an undergraduate at Pomona College, Rocket continued to study Japanese language and culture. In 2003, he received his BA degree in Asian Studies and Media Studies. Rocket has shown his growing popularity by hosting a college radio show featuring local music, often attempted by atmospheric media. Soon after, Rocket discovers that the show is being played – with unknown results on customers – at a local car dealership.
Because of its perceived differences with mainstream American cinema, Japanese film was still a source of Rocket’s spontaneous intellectual interests.
“Storytelling often works differently,” Rockett said. “I gravitate towards films that are less focused on plot and more focused on atmosphere and space.”
After college, Rocket became the Thomas J. Cook Islands – also Canada.
“It made me realize how different people’s relationships with soundscapes can be from one place to another, how history, politics and culture shape the senses,” says Rockett.
Then in 2007 at the University of California, Berkeley, and finally a PhD in 2012 with a focus on Japanese studies and a special focus on film studies. His dissertation was the basis of his book “Ambient Media”.
Roquet joined the MIT faculty in 2016 after three years as an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities at Stanford University and a postdoctoral fellow in International Media at Brown University. book, as well as various essays on VR and other forms of environmental media.
Willingness to explore
MIT is a great fit, says Rockett, given his diverse interests in the relationship between technology and culture.
“One of the things I love about MIT is that there’s a real willingness to explore new emerging ideas and practices, even if they’re not yet in an established disciplinary context,” says Rockett. “MIT allows that cross-disciplinary conversation to happen because you have this space that ties everything together.”
Roquet has also taught several undergraduate courses, including media studies and introductions to Japanese culture; a course on Japanese and Korean cinema; another on Japanese literature and cinema; and a course on digital media in Japan and Korea. This semester he is teaching a new course on Critical Approaches to Immersive Media Studies.
Among MIT’s undergraduates, Rockett says, “They’re incredibly curious, and that means class discussions change from year to year in really interesting ways.”
Whatever piques their curiosity, they are always ready to dig deeper.
When it comes to his ongoing research, Rockett is exploring how the increasing use of immersive media is working to change society’s relationship with the existing physical landscape.
“Questions like this don’t get asked enough,” says Rockett. “There is a lot of emphasis on what virtual spaces offer to the user, but there are always environmental and social effects created by inserting new layers of mediation between man and the world around him. Not to mention producing headphones that are often obsolete within a few years.
Wherever his work takes him, Rockett is involved in a career-long project exploring cultural and historical differences between countries to broaden our understanding of media and technology.
“I don’t want to make the argument that Japan is very different from America. [between the countries]” says Rocket. But when you pay attention to local contexts, you can recognize important differences in how media technologies are understood and used. These can teach us a lot and challenge our assumptions.
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